Aurel von Jüchen

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Aurel von Jüchen (born May 20, 1902 in Gelsenkirchen , † January 11, 1991 in Berlin ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian, religious socialist and writer.

life and work

Aurel von Jüchen comes from a wealthy, middle-class, liberal family. His father of the same name, Aurel von Jüchen sen. ran a private business school. His mother died when he was nine years old; a younger brother Karl Heinz was shot dead in 1919 as a 15-year-old uninvolved passer-by in an argument between Spartacists and the police. The family lost their wealth in the period of inflation .

After graduating from high school in Gelsenkirchen in 1922, he studied theology in Münster , Tübingen and Jena . As a student trainee , he worked in construction, in the mine and in a Gelsenkirchen foundry. After meeting socialist workers, von Jüchen began to get involved in politics and joined a socialist student group. On February 16, 1924, while still a student, he married Irmgard Thomälen in Munster; in the same year the daughter Edith was born.

He was taken into the service of the Thuringian regional church and went to Meuselwitz as vicar . In the seminary in Eisenach he met Karl Kleinschmidt , who became a close friend to him. Both members of the Association of Religious Socialists of Germany (BRSD) were mediated by Emil Fuchs . Von Jüchen received his first pastor in 1932 in Möhrenbach near Arnstadt as the successor to Arthur Rackwitz . He had been a member of the SPD since 1928 and became a popular speaker at party events, which led to disciplines on the part of the church authorities. In 1930 disciplinary proceedings were opened against him and three other pastors in which they were represented by Gustav Radbruch and which only ended with an official reprimand for von Jüchen. Another disciplinary procedure in 1932 because of his protest against the school prayers ordered by Wilhelm Frick led to his removal from office. In the last months of the Weimar Republic he was involved in the Reich leadership of the BRSD and, at the end of 1932, moved into the Landeskirchentag, the synod of the Thuringian Church, as its representative . A return to the pastoral service was made impossible after the "seizure of power" by the National Socialist German Christians .

Only in 1935 did he get a pastor's post again. Through Karl Kleinschmidt's mediation, he became a pastor in the Mecklenburg regional church , first in Gehren (now part of Strasburg (Uckermark) ), then in Rossow near Netzeband , then in Mecklenburg, now in Brandenburg . When he moved to Mecklenburg, he joined the Association of National Socialist Pastors in Mecklenburg . In 1936 Nils Graf Stenbock-Fermor portrayed him on an altar painting for the Schwerin Cathedral. In the winter of 1937/38 he made contact with the Confessing Church and increasingly came into opposition to the German-Christian Bishop Walther Schultz and the church policy of racist exclusion he represented. Together with Karl Kleinschmidt, in June 1938, after a speech in an open letter, he accused Schultz of heresy and demanded his resignation. When a house was set on fire in Rossow during the Reichspogromnacht and von Jüchen wanted to extinguish it, there was a dispute, state persecution and church disciplinary proceedings, in which he was supported by the majority of the residents. When in February 1939 Lutherans of Jewish origin were excluded from the regional church by a church ordinance and official acts for them and Jews were forbidden, von Jüchen and Kleinschmidt tried again to have the regional bishop deposed as a false teacher. However, the beginning of World War II changed the situation. Von Juchen was saved from the threat of arrest by the Gestapo by being drafted into the Wehrmacht . He served as an anti-aircraft soldier and only made it to private as politically unreliable .

Deserted in April 1945, he experienced the invasion of the Red Army and the end of the war in hiding in Rossow. He reorganized the SPD and publicly supported the land reform . In 1946 he was appointed to the Schelfkirche in Schwerin by regional bishop Niklot Beste . Here von Jüchen, together with Kleinschmidt, became one of the most important personalities in cultural life and a co-founder of the Kulturbund . He published in Aufbau , the magazine of the Kulturbund, and became its co-editor. From 1946 to 1948 he represented the church at the FDJ and organized youth forums , which were considered exemplary.

But in 1949 von Jüchen was initially ousted from the Kulturbund, and in December he was excluded from the SED , of which he was automatically a member when the SPD and KPD were forced to unite . On March 23, 1950, NKVD agents arrested him in Schwerin and he was charged with espionage and forming opposition groups before the Soviet Military Tribunal (SMT) . Sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp, he was deported to Vorkuta camp in the Soviet Union . The conditions in the camp caused irreparable damage to his vocal cords. He was released in October 1955 and went to West Berlin. Since he could no longer work in the parish parish because of his vocal cord damage, Bishop Otto Dibelius appointed him pastor of the Berlin-Plötzensee prison and the Berlin women's prison, where he worked until May 1972.

He developed an extensive journalistic activity. His Christmas books became particularly well known, but also his books in which he dealt with communism and atheism. Later he got involved again with the Religious Socialists.

His wife Irmgard, who was also arrested in 1950 and imprisoned for a few months, which led to permanent damage, came to West Berlin from Schwerin in 1955. After her death († February 18, 1968) he married Gerda, born on April 8, 1969. Haak († 2001).

Aurel von Jüchen died in Berlin in 1991 at the age of 88. His grave is in the Zehlendorf cemetery .

Awards

  • 1963: Brothers Grimm Prize

aftermath

In April 2009, the groups requested by CDU and FDP of Schwerin city council that Karl-Kleinschmidt Road in Aurel von Jüchen Street rename. They justified this with Kleinschmidt's Stasi past on the one hand and with von Jüchen's commitment to the Young Community and the resulting persecution by the NKVD on the other. The parliamentary group Die Linke and members of Kleinschmidt's family protested, so the application was withdrawn.

Fonts (selection)

  • Jesus and Pilate. An investigation into the relationship between the kingdom of God and the world empire following John 18, v. 28-19, v. 16 (=  Theological Existence Today . Issue 76). Evangelischer Verlag A. Lempp, Munich 1941, DNB  580304035 .
  • Christianity between evils , Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1959.
  • The fighting parables of Jesus . Kaiser, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-459-01352-4 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 675.
  2. ↑ Documents in the citizen information system of the state capital Schwerin , accessed on June 14, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Juchen, Aurel von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Evangelical Lutheran theologian
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1991
Place of death Berlin